Danielle Spencer, the actress who played the lovably bratty and witty teenager on the 1970s hit sitcom “What’s Happening!!” and its spinoff, “What’s Happening Now!!,” before spending much of her adult life as a veterinarian, died on Monday at Chippenham Hospital in Richmond, Va. She was 60.
Her publicist, who confirmed the death, said the cause was gastric cancer and cardiac arrest.
“What’s Happening!!,” which ran on ABC from 1976 to 1979, was one of the first American television shows to center the experiences of Black teenagers. It was inspired by Eric Monte’s 1975 film “Cooley High,” which was set in Chicago, and it came at a time when Black sitcoms like “Sanford and Son” and “Good Times,” which was co-created by Mr. Monte, had become more prominent in American culture.
The show focused on Roger “Raj” Thomas (Ernest Thomas), Freddie “Rerun” Stubbs (Fred Berry) and Dwayne Nelson (Haywood Nelson) as they grew up in Los Angeles. Dr. Spencer played Dee, Raj’s younger sister, on the original show for 65 episodes, and then again on the reboot, “What’s Happening Now!!,” for 16 episodes.
“I had never seen any young Black girl in that type of spotlight, so I didn’t have a reference point in the media as to how to deal with this opportunity,” Dr. Spencer told Jet Magazine in 2014. “I was from the Bronx. What I did was use my own family as the reference on how to portray my character.”
She became best known for her line “Ooh, I’m telling Mama,” which fans would regularly say to her for years after.
“I chuckle because everyone thinks it’s original, so I have to act like it’s new every time,” she told Black America Web.
Dr. Spencer did not originally get the part after auditioning, she said in an interview with a Richmond CBS affiliate television station in 2016. But a month after her audition, she got a call to head out to Los Angeles — a culture shock for someone who grew up in the Bronx. The character was written as someone who did not hold her tongue and could give as good as she received.
Decades after the show went off the air, Dr. Spencer said that her portrayal wasn’t inspired by her true personality — at least, not totally.
“I did not have an older brother,” Dr. Spencer told the CBS affiliate. “However, I had a lot of pent up sassiness because I wanted to be like that. And I had an excuse, so why not?”
Danielle Louise Spencer was born on June 24, 1965, in the Bronx. Her father, James Spencer, was a civil servant in New York, while her mother, Cheryl (Smith) Spencer, was a schoolteacher.
Her acting career began around age 8.
“I realized early on in my acting classes that it was fun memorizing lines, putting on makeup and pretending to be different characters,” she told Jet Magazine. “Acting really is therapeutic because you’re able to relate to your characters and figure out what makes them tick while also infusing your own personality.”
After “What’s Happening Now!!” went off the air in 1988, Dr. Spencer studied veterinary medicine at Tuskegee University in Alabama, graduating with a doctorate in 1993. (She obtained an undergraduate degree in marine biology from the University of California, Los Angeles.)
From her telling, her love of animals started as a young girl.
“Ever since I was 5 years old, I can recall bringing my first pet home to my mom,” she told an interviewer in 2012. “She’s like, ‘What is this?’ I’m saying, ‘You have to keep the pet. I mean, you can’t throw it out.’ And I’m screaming and crying. And she let me.”
Her veterinary career lasted several decades. While her acting career mostly stopped with the role of Dee Thomas, she did appear as a veterinarian in the 1997 film “As Good as It Gets.”
During the production of the second season of “What’s Happening!!,” Danielle and her stepfather, Tim Pelt, were involved in a car crash that ultimately killed Mr. Pelt. Danielle was in a coma for three weeks, with a broken pelvis and limbs. But she healed and returned in time for the show’s final season.
She later credited Mr. Pelt and her mother, Cheryl Pelt, with being huge influences on her acting career, including helping select auditions to attend. In addition to her mother, she is survived by her brother, Jeremy Felt. .
Nearly 20 years after the crash, Dr. Spencer developed health problems related to it. In 2004, she began experiencing symptoms of spinal stenosis that left her close to paralysis, and that doctors attributed to the crash. In addition, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014 and underwent a double mastectomy. She said she leaned on her family to get through it.
“They didn’t want me to think of suicide even though I had considered it,” Dr. Spencer recalled in a 2016 interview on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
She required emergency brain surgery in 2018.
In 2016, she was inducted into the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
“I still can’t believe it,” she told Black America Web when she found out about the honor. “That’s something people can look at for years to come, long after I’m gone.”